Build A Company Culture Of Learning With This Critical Ingredient

Partly, to compete fiercely and partly just to survive. With the average lifespan of an average S&P 500 company falling from 67 years to just 15 years today, the marketplace is much more unforgiving towards companies that take too long to learn their lessons.

One of the key building blocks they identified in a company culture that supports learning is the concept of ‘psychological safety’. In their words,“To learn, employees cannot fear being belittled or marginalized when they disagree with peers or authority figures, ask naive questions, own up to mistakes, or present a minority viewpoint.”

Prime on their list of the five “key dynamics” that made successful teams at Google was the idea of psychological safety among team members. Team members needed to feel safe enough to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other. In her article Google's Ms Rosovsky described this as “far and away the most important of the five dynamics (they) found -- it’s the underpinning of the other four.”

While self-preserving behavior is natural in the workplace, it can erode the foundation of effective teamwork and a culture of learning from each other. The safer team members feel with each other, the more likely they are to collaborate, admit mistakes, and take new opportunities - critical foundational behaviors in a fast learning culture.

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So how does a leader create a culture of psychological safety in her team?

Encourage Failure

Sooner or later, everyone’s going to make a mistake. Sometimes even a big one.

The pursuit of excellence is an important endeavour, but if everyone on your team feels like they will be punished for the slightest mistake, positive risk-taking behavior will very quickly be ‘crowded out’. Even worse, unproductive politicking behavior to avoid blame will start getting ‘crowded in’.

Making sure that your staff are held accountable for mistakes, while at the same time making it clear that they do get a second chance, helps to bolster the sense of psychological safety within a team.

Admit Your Own Mistakes

Increasingly the idea of an invulnerable Superman of a leader is being eroded. Bill George, creator of the “authentic leadership” approach to management, encourages leaders to be vulnerable and forthright in admitting their own mistakes.

Seeking honest feedback from others to learn from one’s mistakes is not always as easy as it sounds. The temptation as a leader is to surround yourself with sycophants, those who are more interested in telling you what a good job you are doing instead of helping you find ways to become even better.

In Asia, especially, there is a fear of ‘losing face’ when admitting mistakes, or a fear of indirectly encouraging more mistakes through such an admission. If a leader is genuine about taking active steps to prevent repeat errors, and in taking on board honest feedback about improvement, this instead signals strength and gives a protocol for others to follow when they too get things wrong.

Hold “Anxiety Parties”

This may be a bit less conventional but certainly worth a try. Google Ventures recommends throwing “anxiety parties” - openly sharing what each team member is vulnerable and anxious about, specifically about the way they interact with the rest of the team.

In a way, this functions like a 360 degree feedback tool, except it is uniquely tailored to address each individual’s main concerns about their own workstyle. By getting direct feedback on whether particular anxieties are indeed areas for improvement, leaders avoid wasting effort on aspects that don’t actually bother anyone, and focus on those that really do.

A pleasant side effect is that by demanding vulnerability from everyone (no one in the discussion should have a blank sheet with no anxieties), an environment of safety is created naturally amongst people who might otherwise find it difficult to let their guard down.

Learning At The Center Of Company Culture

Regardless of whether you’re leading a nimble startup or a large multinational, having a culture that promotes psychological safety and vulnerability improves the chances that your company will learn faster than your competitors. Best of all, the investment comes just in changing the pattern of communicating about errors, leaving your balance sheet free of additional liabilities.

CheeTung Leong is the CEO and co-founder of EngageRocket, providing leaders real-time employee feedback and analytics. Follow him on LinkedIn.

I am passionate about the potential of analytics and technology in unleashing peak performance in people. I'm the CEO of EngageRocket, an HR tech startup that analyzes employee feedback to advise you on how to manage your team better.